


From the Embrace of All Desolations

by midautumnnightdream



Series: The Future is Thine [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Barricade Day, Barricade Day 2019, Canon Era, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Minor Cosette Fauchelevent/Marius Pontmercy, Post-Barricade, Printer Enjolras, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, canon era AU, everything is still pain, implied PTSD, minor Musichetta/Laughing Mistress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 04:36:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19124731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midautumnnightdream/pseuds/midautumnnightdream
Summary: "Here misery meets the ideal. The day embraces the night, and says to it: ‘I am about to die, and thou shalt be born again with me.’"Enjolras and the aftermath of the June Rebellion.(A set-up piece of sorts to my other story,The Earth Will Beam With Radiance,but can be read on it's own.)





	From the Embrace of All Desolations

The first time he opens his eyes, it’s hardly an awakening at all. The lights and forms of the dimly lit room blur around him, bleeding into a nauseating cacophony.

„M’sieur Enjolras, thank Heaven.” A cool hand on his forehead. „Try to hold still, will you?”

„Is he awake?” Another voice, further away „You must try to keep him awake no matter what.”

„Really? And how exactly should I do that, pray tell?” The first voice is turned away, twisting in annoyance and underlying anxiety. „I didn’t know you fancied yourself a doctor.”

An exasperated sigh „Everyone knows you must not sleep on a head wound. Really Matelote, where have you been?”

„Hush both of you.” A third voice, matronly and — familiar. Familiar, all of them. Enjolras forces his eyes shut and open again, but the room refuses to focus. „Where..?”

„Hush. We are safe and secure as can be. That will do for now.”

It doesn’t do, but he has no choice but to accept that for a moment. There is something, something more important than his current location, something that he should be able to remember. If only the room would stop spinning —

He closes his eyes again. Pain. A cacophony of sounds, shouts, gunshots. Arms wrapped around him, sheltering him. Words he cannot make out. Something about Republic. Acrid smell of gunpowder and — stale wine?

„Hey. Hey, m’sieur, you must stay awake now, you hear me?”

He opens his eyes, tries to fix them on the faces around him, with no avail.

A strangled breathing, hitched with pain _—_ _in_ _you, Enjolras._

„Grantaire?” he manages to force out, whether asking for news or confirmation, he couldn’t say.

It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t need to see, or remember, to comprehend the silence around him.

Enjolras closes his eyes again.

* * *

More comes to him, the next time he is awake. He barely opens his eyes then, letting the pictures in his mind eye run past him. Cataloguing each beloved face one by one.

He’s sure his friends would forgive him for this lapse.

* * *

The comprehension comes in bits and pieces in these first few days, frustratingly slow, but every new piece seems to burrow itself into his heart like a shard of ice. So many deaths, more arrests, as the king and his government use the failed revolt as an excuse to clamp down their control. The strange room around him belongs to the house of Mother Hucheloup’s late sister, now empty. It’s the ageing matron herself who finally tells him in short quiet words, her rheumatic hands doing their best to be gentle with the bandage she’s unwrapping from around Enjolras head, how instead of leaving as they had been begged to, the Corinthe staff had taken refuge with one of their neighbours, accepting hospitality that had been denied to the others on the barricade, so that they could bear witness to the final agony of the great confrontation which had so disrupted their lives. And when the battle had died down and badly injured Grantaire had used his last strength to deposit unconscious Enjolras on their doorstep, the neighbours had been persuaded to allow passage through their house to the streets beyond.

Enjolras finds that he cannot follow that thought further, not the whys or the hows of it, or what must have happened afterwards. Not yet.

The women of Corinthe go out every day, to the markets, to the reading rooms, trying to find a rhythm of the everyday in their upended lives, keeping their eyes and ears open for any and all news. Curiously, no announcement of arrest warrant reaches them. Enjolras’ uncle sends him a letter by one of the printing house boys, not daring to visit himself, telling him he has let everyone know Enjolras is visiting his father’s family in Marseilles.

Impossibly enough, it seems that no confirmation of his presence at the barricades has reached the government.

Musichetta and Bahorel’s mistress Rosamunda come by, as much to gather news as to share their own. Yet they do not speak of the deaths. The conversations are almost disconcertingly pragmatic; of the last requests, keepsakes entrusted and letters that need to be written, the documents removed from Enjolras’ and Combeferre’s shared apartment. Of arrests and warrants. They, too, wonder about the lack of investigation in Enjolras’ activities, but speculate that with the police spy dead and everyone else reticent, there is no way to confirm his identity. Moreover, as the days pass, a strange sort of alibi campaign starts to take shape among his friends and acquaintances, with the speculation and claims of his presence in various locations in and out of the city growing increasingly absurd and inconsistent — a crescendo of confusion which neither lady claims credit for, but which they have taken upon themselves to spread and encourage whenever an opportunity arises.

“Don’t mention it,” Rosamunda answers almost brusquely when Enjolras tries, haltingly, to express his appreciation. “After everything that has happened, everything that we have lost, it’s more important than ever to get this right. We will win someday, there is no other option.”

The three of them look at each other, a mutual understanding passing between them.

They love the Republic. After all, what else is left for them to love?

* * *

More visitors come. The boys from the printing house, bringing him news from the papers and from the streets in equal turns; acquaintances from various political organizations and newspapers, some of them angry, some of them disheartened, but all of them wary, almost _farouche_ , in the way he hasn’t seen before. Enjolras does his best to advise caution and optimism in turn, trying not to dwell on how much each encouragement takes out of him. Even Courfeyrac’s mistress Mireille pays him a brief visit on her way to work, an act of consideration that shouldn’t have come as a surprise from a woman with such a sweet disposition, though given her lack of interest in politics, he doubts they will remain in touch. The others send letters — the men they had sent away from the barricade, the neighbours who had watched him growing up, the friends of their society offering solidarity in their shared grief, perhaps most surprisingly Feuilly’s old concierge, whom the two of them had helped with moving heavy furniture a few winters back and who had never failed to invite them over for lunch when Enjolras was visiting, eyeing the two young men with a knowing glint, as if she was privy to some secret they were unaware of.

Enjolras wonders about it, about all the people able and willing to reach him, the awareness of his activities during the revolt unspoken but always acknowledged between them, whereas the police knows nothing and remains capable of doing even less. However this could be, he surprises himself with the desperate edge to his gratitude. Even with his spirit shredded almost to the point of ruination, with the empty, icy silences of loss and longing echoing through every inch of him, he is rarely lonely. He doesn’t know, and never asks, how they do it, but he loves and admires every single one of them with everything left of him.

* * *

(Sometimes, when his thoughts turn more punishing, he wonders about the denizens of Rue de la Chanvrerie. Of closed doors and shuttered windows, of the cold metal of a weapon clenched too tightly between his fingers. Did they know? They must have, the execution had hardly been a quiet affair — after all, had he not himself made a spectacle of it, for the sake of the witnesses as much as for the insurgents, in hopes that they might exonerate his comrades, even if he tainted himself further in their eyes? Had they turned their absolution onto him instead? His life for the murderer’s? His name had passed from several lips, loudly, he knew that, and his appearance was one that many people considered memorable. It was impossible that none of them could have testified against him. And yet.)

* * *

The blinding headaches do not go away, even as the other symptoms of concussion ease up. His left arm, grazed by a bullet remains stiff and painful from the elbow up, the coldness of it sometimes seeping down to his fingers, punishing him sharply every time he overextends himself or even sleeps in the wrong position, but that is to be expected. The migraines, however, come without rhyme and reason — sometimes in response to stress and grief lingered on, or too harshly suppressed, but at other times with no discernible reason whatsoever.

More distressing still are the memories that catch him in the death of night, in bright mornings and rainy afternoons, in the middle of the sentence that strikes a too familiar chord, from the smell of gunpowder still clinging to a shirt discarded on the floor; dreams that are too real, too bright to be considered as such, a movement caught at the edges of his vision, warm embraces and cool fingers brushing his brow, even as the child Gavroche capers through the shadows and the murderer shakes and begs for mercy, the cacophony of smoke and gunshots a merciful distraction from the words he can almost make out.

He takes it all in, because he has to. He doesn’t think of it as an atonement, nor a vigil owed to the dead — merely another hard fact in the long list of unpalatable truths that he is learning to live with.

* * *

Nearly two months pass before he makes his way back to the printing house, giving passing credence to his uncle’s claim that he has been away from Paris. Uncle Matheu, bushy blond brows furrowed in a familiar expression of understated concern inquires after his health, squeezes his good shoulder briefly and then sends him to his work without further ado.

The matters are going to be tense between the two of them again, Enjolras knows; whatever understanding about Enjolras’ more incendiary political involvement had been reached between them after the Glorious Days evaporated again by the recent events.

It is not that his uncle lacks sympathy for his views, but good man though he is, he cannot see why Enjolras couldn’t stick to the pamphlets and speeches and leave the fighting and bleeding to other people; people who are not nephews he loves and heirs to his life’s work. No doubt he has already composed the arguments in his mind, in this deliberate and methodical way that the two of them share; how the heightened suspicion falling on Enjolras’ person, his narrow escape and his lingering medical difficulties each make a compelling reason for him to avoid an active confrontation in the future. And for all his love and respect for the man, this is something he cannot do. Not after everything.

It is ironic, really, how he is having easier time finding a common ground with his dead friends’ mistresses than his own flesh and blood.

* * *

It takes another month before he tries to write again. Not about the June Rebellion, as it has already been baptized — at least not directly. It is too raw, too incriminating, too much of everything. And yet it bleeds through every word he puts to the paper, the way his arguments come together, through the phrases he uses, that have never before been part of his lexicon, but have belonged to others who cannot write any more. He loves it as much as it hurts him, but he knows he cannot work like this, not alone, not with his raw senses making it impossible to analyse and edit the text objectively. And for all the rational argument, he finds that he cannot ask anyone else in the printing house or the journalists he frequents to work through his pain for him.

Instead, he recalls a mournful praise of Jean Prouvaire, about Rosamunda being the harshest and the most exacting editor a writer could ask for, whether one was writing for Muse or for Patria.

He sends word to the apartment she and Musichetta now share and arranges a meeting in a nearby café, feeling peculiarly like a boy again, trying to convince his uncle to let him have his own run of political tracts that could well bring trouble upon the printing house. It’s not that he is expecting a rejection, exactly, but there’s something about Rosamunda’s forthright manner, the laughter she wields like a weapon, that never fails to disconcert him, for reasons he cannot quite comprehend.

She doesn’t disappoint. “Excellent,” she declares, after just skimming over the first few paragraphs. “It has been too long since I got to work with _good_ political argumentation. Sometimes it feels like all we’ve been doing since June is backtracking.” She glances at Enjolras over the rim of the paper, dark eyes shrewd, considering. “I’ll take these, let us agree on that. And if you are satisfied with my contribution, I’d be happy to help with any future writings you are no doubt already composing. But then I’ll want something in return.”

“Oh?”

“ _Quid pro quo_ , as those not-lawyer types liked to say.” The smile turns melancholy, before sharpening again. “I’d like a better circulation for some works of my own.”

Enjolras blinks, trying his hardest not to look taken aback. Really, he should have seen that coming. “I thought you published for the women’s organisation,” he answers carefully.

Rosamunda nods. “I have done so and have ever intention of continuing in the future. But our reach is by necessity limited.” Her smile turns wry. “Very few men will read anything published under the auspices of the women’s organisations, and many women too, prefer those with a more generic scope. I want more — I have opinions and I want them to be considered on their own value, not as a woman writing for women alone. You have contacts, you have published for awhile and moreover you are directly involved in the business. How does it sound?”

Enjolras considers that for a moment, but truly, from the rational point of view, there is only one answer he can give. “I’d need to read your writings first.” _Because_ _it’s true that_ _I have never read any of the tracts your organisation published, for all th_ _at_ _we’ve been acquainted for years and you were_ _bound by treaty and_ _social contract with_ _one of my dearest friends._ Suddenly the thought bothers him more than he could have expected.

If Rosamunda discerns his preoccupation or the reason behind it, she gives no hint. She merely laughs, quick and sharp. “I would expect nothing less.”

“Then Citoyenne, I’d say we are agreed — provisionally.”

“Good,” Rosamunda answers, evidently unconcerned for her ability to be persuasive in her writing. “I really need a productive activity to keep me occupied during the winter months; being homebound will be frustrating enough without turning my surroundings into circles of hell that only the bravest dare to enter.”

Enjolras brow furrows “Citoyenne, are you not well?”

“What? Oh no,” Rosamunda answers, already preoccupied by the papers in her hand, sorting through her reticule for a bottle of ink. “I only mean that I’m most likely going to be laid up from late January through February and need an activity to keep me from driving my poor Musichetta out of home. I hate sewing.

“She means,” Musichetta adds, appearing at the table. “that she’s pregnant. Sorry I’m late, a client held me up for longer than I expected.” She sits down.

“Oh,” Enjolras answers, eloquently.

The sigh Rosamunda gives is almost worthy of Mademoiselle Mars in it’s theatricality. “Pregnant. Not dying. Don’t give me that look. This is a good thing.” She chews her lip, uncharacteristically unsure. “I admit, I didn’t know what to make of it at first. This is something almost out of a bad romance novel, isn’t it? But on the whole… given everything… yes, it is a good thing.” she shrugs, aiming for flippant and falling rather short of the mark. “Bahorel clan reaches far and wide, Paris included. And they have always been very welcoming. We arranged everything. I’ll have my baby here, care for him, nurse him, but he’s going to grow up with his grandparents in Provence. It is better for a child at the countryside, and my life and work is here. All the same, I’m glad. Really.”

Musichetta pokes at her side. “Just think, your child is going to be nicknamed Death To Aristocrats, or Le Seize Floreal before he or she is old enough to walk.”

“War On Castles, Peace On Cottages,” Rosamunda shoots back. “Please, I’m her mother, I have _some_ say in the matter.”

“ Oh, not Mephistopheles?”

Enjolras closes his eyes for a moment, letting the laughter and teasing wash over him, as he often used to do in Musain or Corinthe. He’s not entirely sure how he ended up a part of this conversation, but for the moment, he can feel nothing but gratitude. He opens his eyes again, meeting Rosamunda’s. “If you are happy, then I, too am glad for you.” He closes his eyes again. “and for him.”

A moment of silence fills the room.

Predictably, it’s Musichetta who breaks it. “Rosé mentioned you were bringing some immensely serious and potentially illegal political writings. You know, I’ve always wanted to be a part of a conspiracy.”

* * *

The shadows catch up to him in most unexpected places.

The little café at the Place de l'Odéon is no Musain, let alone Corinthe, but it is close to both the theatre and the medical school, and carries it’s own share of experiences. It is not that he’s seeking out locations that hold memories of his friends, but while prudence keeps him away from Rue de la Chanvrerie, he couldn’t reasonably avoid them all — not in this city, where every stone and turn carries their footmarks and fingerprints. Moreover, he wouldn’t wish to.

All the same, when the proprietor greets him with a delighted smile and asks him about his bespectacled friend, it’s all Enjolras can do not to freeze. He manages to murmur out a non-committal greeting that the proprietor, already distracted by the next client, pays no mind to, accepts the pamphlet drafts from his startled contact from the medical school and all but flees the premises. He spends the next hour sitting in a forgotten alcove of the Odeon, staring at Camille Desmoulins’ house across the square, at the medical school down the street, letting the soothing, electrifying susurrus of poets, doctors and revolutionaries past and present wash through him.

* * *

It is nothing short of happenstance that brings him back into contact with Marius Pontmercy.

From the practical point of view, that set of circumstances is perhaps not so surprising: while Enjolras’ participation in the insurrection has been carefully obscured, Pontmercy’s seems to have been all but completely forgotten, except by a handful of the survivors — his late and unexpected arrival, relative obscurity in the radical circles and the long disappearance afterwards had all contributed to that. Moreover, Enjolras himself had witnessed the blow that had felled the other man and had not unreasonably counted him among the fallen. Therefore, when the two of them all but run into each other at the bookshop near Luxembourg late in November, Enjolras is only slightly less startled than Marius himself.

No, the oversight of his survival is not surprising. Somewhat more curious are the circumstances that made it possible, something that Marius himself confesses to him in a low voice as the two of them wander through the abandoned alleys of the Luxembourg, taking their unexpected reunion away from prying eyes and ears.

“I don’t remember much,” the younger man admits, to all appearances deeply preoccupied by the rustle of falling leaves under his walking stick. He hasn’t quite met Enjolras eyes since the first moment the two of them locked gazes across the several rows of yellowing books. “From the battle — yes, at least most of it, and what came before. In bits and pieces. It’s still coming back, some of it. But not about getting injured, or anything about my rescue — well, I suppose I must have been quite unconscious the entire time. I had head injuries, I know that much, and then I was ill for such a long time. Afterwards, well...” He hunches over, almost subconsciously favouring his injured side. His eyes’ meet Enjolras’ for a brief moment, before he quickly averts his gaze again, but the hint of desperation in them is unmistakeable. “There has been no way to know, well, anything at all, really. What I think I remember, who says it’s not some mad fever dream? After all, I thought...” Pontmercy trails off, flushing scarlet, but he doesn’t backtrack or try to escape the conversation as he might have a year ago.

Enjolras’ heart goes out for his comrade, though he takes care to school his expression from anything that could be interpreted as pity. He can well remember the first disoriented days of his recovery, can imagine how hard it must have been for Marius, after so many months and isolated from everyone who shared his experiences.

“I’m sorry,” he eventually says. Pontmercy is still not looking at him, so he settles to putting his hand on the other’s shoulder instead. “I swear to you if I had even a slightest inclination of your survival, I would have reached out. No one should have to work through such an experience on their own. I was quite sure that you… no matter. I should have made sure.”

If anything, his words make Pontmercy hunch over even harder. “I knew,” the other confesses, almost in whisper. “about you. Or well, I found out a few weeks ago. That fellow from the medical school — I can never remember his name. Anyway, I’m… I didn’t know how to reach you, or if it was safe. Or where to find you, really.”

_In the printing house?_ Enjolras doesn’t say anything. Miserable as he looks, it’s hard to begrudge Pontmercy his lapse in consideration, and it is not as if the man owes Enjolras his company. “We are here now,” he eventually says, giving the other’s shoulder a brief squeeze “and I’m not going anywhere. If you wish to recall the past, I will help you the best I can. If you’d rather focus on the future, whenever you are ready, there are options for that too.”

“I… yes,” Marius seems a bit dazed, but straightens suddenly, as if something occurs to him. “Yes, we should meet. There is someone.. something you should be able to confirm or deny. A dinner perhaps? Though I need to arrange a few things first. You don’t wish to meet my grandfather, of that I’m quite sure. And then there’s the matter of.. oh, I should probably tell you, I’m engaged.”

“Congratulations,” Enjolras murmurs, doing his best not to make his well-wishes sound like a question. While he had paid little heed to the gossip about Pontmercy’s love life his friends indulged in, he could well recall Courfeyrac’s complaints about his dear roommate’s reticence on the matter. To go from having no decided confirmation of the lady’s existence to being — presumably — invited to dine with her, less than an hour after finding his comrade unexpectedly alive, is quite a turnabout, but one that he knows better than to question. All the same, it is heartening to see Pontmercy genuinely happy, looking towards the future with hope in his eyes, and Enjolras tells him as much.

Even in his flustered state, Marius’ smile is blinding.

* * *

When he eventually meets with Pontmercy again, a week before Christmas, at a restaurant in the more exclusive part of Marais, at least some aspects of the later’s circumspection are explained.

Sitting in the shadowed corner of the room, well obscured by Pontmercy’s fluster and the delighted charm of his young bride, is another quite familiar figure.

It is not quite a throwback to the days of fighting that Enjolras’ has experienced a few times when encountering unexpected reminders, but he can feel his pulse quicken, his awareness sharpening to a knife’s edge; not exactly an anticipation of danger, but no longer a simple expectation of a nice dinner with friends. The introductions morph quickly into a strange pantomime, Pontmercy agitated, almost trembling with anticipation behind a thin veneer of calm, Mademoiselle Fauchelevent confused but not quite surprised, the old gentleman from the barricade — Citizen Fauchelevent? — utterly indecipherable behind the mask of bland courtesy that gives no hint of recognition — and in the middle of all this, Enjolras himself, trying to rapidly assess the situation.

“Ah  C itizen,” he eventually says, keeping his voice  as  quiet  as possible , trying to ignore Pontmercy’s eyes burning holes into him. “It is good to see you well.”

The older man’s expression doesn’t flicker, but he can sense Pontmercy all but collapse against him, as if relieved from some great burden. But it’s Mademoiselle Fauchelevent that breaks the standoff.

“Oh! But you know each other!” She claps her hands. “No, no, don’t try to deny it. You see how it is,” she turns to Enjolras. “My father will keep his secrets. Very well, we need not speak of secrets tonight. Tonight is for friends. Come.” She turns back towards her father. “As Monsieur Enjolras is a friend of yours, as he is a friend of my Marius, you have no excuse to lurk back here. You will come sit and dine with us, isn’t that right?”

“Quite right,” Marius hastens to add, his voice giddy with — relief? Exhilaration? Thousand questions flicker across the surface, each of them tampered down one by one.

The dinner is pleasant enough affair, Mademoiselle Fauchelevent thankfully quite capable of holding up the conversation from both ends, enough to make up for three men with little aptitude for smalltalk and each preoccupied in their own way. They speak of printing presses, a little, and the art of illumination as it is taught to girls in the convent school. Eventually Marius recovers enough to ask about ‘old acquaintances’ and Enjolras answers the best he can, while remaining mindful of their surroundings. So he keeps references to their more seditious activities to minimum, instead speaking of the efforts to recover the wineshop, of the hospital school at Necker, closed down during the cholera epidemic, but now struggling to gain traction again, of “papers” published. He doesn’t miss the surprised glance Marius throws at him when he mentions the ladies involved in the later project, but Mademoiselle Fauchelevent seems intrigued and he makes a mental note to arrange some introductions.

All through the evening, Citizen Fauchelevent remains silent and unreadable, only briefly enlivened by the subject of education. Not long after the meal is finished, he points out the lateness of the hour and the need to escort his daughter home. The protests of said young Citoyenne notwithstanding, Enjolras and Marius are soon left to their own devices. By unspoken agreement, they leave the restaurant behind, seeking out surroundings more suited for confidential conversation.

Marius is agitated. No longer distracted by his fiancée, all the frenetic energy he has been trying to quell for the entire evening comes back in full force. As soon as they have settled in a smoke-filled backroom of a no-name wineshop they have chosen for their conversation, he turns towards Enjolras, his entire body tense with anticipation.

“Well! You saw him. You know him.”

“He struck a rather memorable figure at the barricade, yes,” Enjolras answers, the peculiarities of the conversation finally falling into place. “Has he claimed otherwise?”

“That’s just it!” Marius removes his hat, runs a hand through already mussed hair. “He doesn’t say anything. I have tried to bring up the subject indirectly, but you saw how he responds to that. He knows nothing, he’s implacable, a rock! I really thought I was going mad.”

Enjolras hums thoughtfully. “There’s no shortage of reasons to conceal a revolutionary activity — though generally not from one’s compatriots. Still, there must be a reason. He doesn’t strike me as a cruel man, to mislead you for a fancy. Is it his daughter, perhaps, who he’s trying to protect from such knowledge?

“Cosette knows nothing, that is true. But there is more, don’t you see?” Marius voice grows agitated again. “Someone brought me away from the barricade. If Monsieur Fauchelevent was there — and escaped — it only stands to reason that he must have been my mysterious rescuer. But how? And why keep it secret?” His eyes fixate on Enjolras again. “How did you get out? I never asked.”

Enjolras doesn’t flinch. “With the help of many brave people. I fear I don’t remember my escape any better than you do. But it was Mother Hucheloup who persuaded her neighbours to allow us a safe passage through the backdoors.”

“Through the buildings. Yes that makes sense.” Marius runs his hand through his hair again. “I suppose I could ask — no, that is foolishness. Though I wonder how Monsieur Fauchelevent could have demanded a passage for us; he’s not a neighbour and friend to them, as Mother Hucheloup is.

“You don’t know that,” Enjolras points out. “He could have had a friend there, such things happen.”

“Perhaps,” Marius allows. “He could be protecting the identity of his rescuer — well, I'm no danger to him or her, but it would be foolish and cruel to press the matter, if that’s the case. And if it’s a secret of his own that he’s protecting...” he gives Enjolras a helpless look. “if I insist too hard, he might well disappear overnight and take Cosette with him. He’s such a strange, furtive man! Courfeyrac used to call him...” Marius closes off abruptly, realising himself. Unspoken grief resonates through the smokey air between them.

“Monsieur Le Blanc, yes,” Enjolras finishes softly. “Yes, I remember now. Well, he’s the man of great mysteries, but demanding answers from him is unlikely to yield the results you want, that is true. He is no agent of authorities, or we’d both be sitting in the Sainte-Pélagie by now.”

“Agent of...”” Marius shakes his head in bemusement. “No, I wouldn’t think so.” There is still a lingering grief in his eyes, but the look he gives Enjolras is wistful, fond. “But it makes sense that you would consider that. There was so much you couldn’t tell us about at the dinner, wasn’t there? I’m no longer sure who I am, how I fit into this world — other than as Cosette’s husband, I hope — but I’m — glad, I think, that you haven’t changed at all.

Enjolras shakes his head, bemused in his turn. “Of course I have changed. Just like you, like Citizen Fauchelevent, like the rest of us. The events we have witnessed, the shadows we have passed through, will do that to a person. But we are still ourselves, will always be ourselves, I should think.” He considers the man in front of him. Rumpled hair, too-bright eyes, still thin and pale from long convalescence. But alive, vibrant, hopeful for the future. “You have always been a man of principles and passion,” he says quietly. “Even when you are unsure of what to do with all that zeal. There will always be a need for men like you — and you’ll always have a place among us, I hope you know that.”

Marius smile is brittle, but genuine all the same. “I appreciate your faith,” he says. “Even if I’m not quite sure I deserve it. To put it simply, I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “My views haven’t changed, but my circumstances have. I’m not only risking myself any more. But what good I can do in this world — I still yearn for it. We’ll see.”

There is more he could say to this, the more he _wishes_ to say, but the time is not right and the bitter sting of cigar smoke is giving way to a true headache. They bid each other farewell after this, and despite himself, Enjolras cannot help but wonder if he’ll ever see Pontmercy again.

* * *

All things considered, it’s perhaps unfair of him to be quite so surprised when he receives an invitation to the wedding.

A surprise that wanes slightly, as he learns that Musichetta and Rosamunda have each received one as well, albeit the later has already excused herself (“It would be _just_ like a baby Bahorel to disregard all decorum to make an appearance at the wedding”), as have the ladies of Corinthe and several of their contacts in the newspapers and Sorbonne. No doubt Mademoiselle Fauchelevent — with Musichetta’s help, perhaps — has a hand in this, determined to counter her husband-to-be’s inclination towards solitude, and to build and maintain contacts outside the dubious confines of Pontmercy’s grandfather’s social circle.

“You can be my escort,” Musichetta declares, waving her invitation under his nose. Enjolras hastily moves a wax candle out of the way. “I will tell everyone my sister is about to give birth, and this way we’ll both have an excuse to withdraw early.”

“Only if we are truly leaving — I should warn you, I have no intention of taking to the dance floor. But — a sister?” He had gotten a rather different impression of how that relationship was developing, but then, he’d be first to admit that he was no expert of such matters.

“First, well, _second_ of all, no, I certainly don’t hold sisterly feelings towards Rosé, but I have no intention of explaining the finer nuance of human relationships to a church full of bourgeoisie, as amusing as that could be. _First_ of all, that is why I’m asking you. Dancing is all well and good, but there are finer things in life than spending an evening fending off young — and not so young — men who are convinced that an unescorted grisette is a fair game.”

Enjolras feels his eyebrows shoot up. “At a wedding?”

Musichetta gives him a long-suffering look. “Citizen, you should try to be a woman in this city for a day. Now, are we going or not?

There is not much to be said to that.

* * *

The ceremony itself is unnecessarily long, the streets crowded, the dinner noisy, the grandfather or the groom odious and the father of the bride nowhere to be found. But the newly minted Madame Pontmercy beams like a beacon of hope and radiance, and Marius looks — happy, truly, genuinely happy for the first time Enjolras has known him, and as they make their farewells, he cannot regret a single tedious moment.

“I almost asked you to be my best man,” Marius whispers to him, sudden, impulsive, as if rushing to get the words out before he regrets them. “When my grandfather asked, and all I could think of — There’s no one else left in this world I’d rather — But I thought, it would only be painful for both of us, wouldn’t it?”

Enjolras can only nod, placing both hands on Marius shoulders, holding him tightly for a moment, fixing his gaze.

“Be happy,” he whispers back, almost an order, almost a plea. “He’d be so very proud of you.”

For once, Marius looks straight back at him, his eyes bright with unshed tears. “Of you too.”

* * *

The night outside is surprisingly quiet, the cold winter air soothing after the clatter of the banquet. Enjolras lingers in the doorway, waiting for his companion. Coming from the brightly lit room, it takes him a long moment to notice the tall figure standing under the dining room windows, longer still, to recognise  C itizen Fauchelevent. The older man’s face is illuminated by the light of the windows, his expression of equal parts profound joy and sadness, as well as something strange, something that whispers of terrible, inexorable resolution on a lined face, of a red flag, of  _ “et la mort” _ .

Enjolras withdraws, seized by strange reverence he cannot explain. Soon, the other events put the incident out of his mind, but the strange melancholy lingers for the weeks to come. 

* * *

In the end, their excuses at the wedding turn out to be rather more provident than expected — the first thing to greet them at the door of Musichetta’s and Rosamunda’s building is a wail of a newborn.

“That’s — fast,” Musichetta says faintly, her eyes wide, looking more taken aback than he has ever seen her. “It’s not supposed to happen so fast, is it?”

The midwife, an oddly familiar-looking woman in her late thirties, with a long dark braid wrapped around her head gives an eloquent shrug. “She’s impatient. How _very_ much like her parents.” She glances at Enjolras. “I’m quite sure I’m not supposed to let you in, but since you are here already, you might as well meet that niece of ours before I kick you out.”

“Ah,” he glances at the half-closed bedroom door, at the bloody linens discarded on the floor, back at the midwife — Bahorel’s sister, he now realises, and indeed, the similarity is unmistakeable. “Is that all right?”

“ _Somebody_ get in here,” Rosamunda’s voice, exhausted though it is, carries quite well all the same. “and take that baby before I drop her.”

In days to come, Enjolras can never quite explain how he ended up perched on a rickety chair at Rosamunda’s bedside, staring at the tiny crunched up face of a newborn baby, screaming her head off at the indignity of being handed around.

“She’s… beautiful?” he tries.

Rosamunda laughs, short and hoarse, but with something like awe in her gaze as she glances at her daughter. “You mean, she looks like one of these things Combeferre used to keep in the jars at his bookshelf, only louder. _And_ she has her father’s nose, the poor thing. But she’ll turn out just fine, I expect.”

The baby quiets down, trying to look around at the sound of her mother’s voice. Her eyes meet Enjolras’, wide and curious and utterly unafraid, as if there is nothing in the world that could hurt her.

“No,” he whispers. “Beautiful.”

* * *

The next time Parisians take to the streets in the spring 1833, the fighting starts, and is over, before anyone has a chance to adjust — a quick, localised strife, hardly worth a byline in a history book

Enjolras spends the entire time huddled up in a dark room, with a cold cloth pressed against his eyes and bitter sense of failure swelling in his heart. He has to send away all well-meaning messengers stopping by his rooms, the clamor of fighting both too close and immensely far. If there is more to the wetness of his cheeks than the damp cloth could account for, then there is no one to witness it in the darkness.

(The next morning, he wakes far too early, but clear-headed. He makes his way to the grooming mirror, locks gazes with the pale stranger with red-rimmed eyes, as if holding a silent conversation. Eventually he nods and makes his way back to bed. Some accord has been reached.

There will be mo re battles  unfought ,  conversations interrupted, deadlines missed. Perhaps there is always going to be. But he won’t fall into the trap of letting that define his sense of self.)

* * *

The fifth of June 1833 dawns bright and cheerful, as if there is nothing to mourn. But by the mid-morning, just as the year before, the clouds start to gather, eventually allowing the skies to weep.

Enjolras hardly notices. He pre-emptively requests two days off from the printing house (his uncle merely raises an eyebrow and with a tone brooking no argument tells him to take the third one as well). Even before the sun has risen over the rooftops of Belleville, he makes his way to Rue de la Verrerie, stopping under the windows of No 16 for a long mournful hour. From there he makes his way across the city, to Rue Saint-Honoré, to Boulevard de la Madeleine, to Boulevard des Capucines and onwards, a long circuous route to the Pont d'Austerlitz and back again, by Boulevard Bourdon, Marché-Saint-Jean and Rue de la Verrerie once again — a strange kind of pilgrimage, the pattern of which would make no sense to anyone who wasn’t already searching for it.

Just like the year before, it’s well into the afternoon when he finally makes his way to the wineshop of Corinthe. He stops at the further end of the street, his eyes tracking landmarks only he can see. Walking through them, acknowledging each. _Jean P_ _rouvaire. The gamin Gavroche. A young factory worker whose name I never learned_ _—_ _what was he doing all the way out here?_ Then forward to the invisible line across the street, where the spots grew closer together. _Citizen Mabeuf. Bahorel. The two women from Les Halles. Citizen Boubière, formerly of the National Guard. Others, no doubt, I couldn’_ _t_ _possibly remember them all. I only felt their deaths, as the line of_ _defence_ _gave way._ A few more steps forward, a sharp intake of breath. _Courfeyrac._ _Combeferre._ _Joly. Bossuet_ _—_ _together of course. Feuilly._ A few more steps, this time not to a place of death, but to a memorial, lines carved into the wall. _Peuples_. _Yes_.

Eventually, he steps into the very shadow of the wineshop itself, taking care that he couldn’t be observed from the windows.  There are more places to mark, inside: he might even be expected there,  b ut there is  one more out here that he needs to see first.

Very slowly, heedless of the  drizzling rain, he makes his way across the street, to the doorway he cannot consciously remember passing  through , but which he recognises somewhere deep inside all the same.  A n ancient alley door, low, vaulted, narrow, solid, entirely of oak, lined on the inside with a sheet of iron and iron stays.

The house with the dead porter.

He stops, almost as if to knock, but leans his forehead against the heavy wood instead.

_Why cannot I remember?_

_Smoke and screams, something heavy he almost knows of more than he feels. He cannot get up. No, this is not the end he would have chosen, but it is the one he could accept._

“ _Enjolras? No, no, get up!”_

_ No more shouting but f or the cacophony in his head, and ragged breathing by his ear. Distress? Pain? _

“ _ H old on,  hold  _ on _, _ just _ a few minutes, you have to  — ” _

_There is blood on the hands holding him, the smell of it so sharp and tangy he can taste it._

“ _Enjolras, you must, for — for the Republic, for all of us, you must —”_

_He wants to respond, to offer what reassurance he can, but every jostling movement sends a fresh wave of agony through him and he cannot speak, cannot open his eyes. Instead he reaches out his good hand, blindly, but trusting that it would be accepted._

_A startled sigh, sticky, bloody fingers pressed around his own._

_More pleading, not directed to him any more, but to the people behind the closed door. He cannot focus enough to make out the words any more. He has to trust that it would be opened._

“— _believe in you.”_

“Enjolras?”

He’s startled out of his reverie, whipping around to  the  uncertain face of Marius Pontmercy,  umbrella clutched in one hand and his top hat in the other,  looking as uncomfortable as Enjolras had ever seen him.

“Ah, sorry,” the smile directed to him is sincere, but so hesitant that another man might have taken offence. “I did not mean to startle you, but you were standing so still and you didn’t answer when I called you —” The man cuts of, wincing to realise himself rambling.

Enjolras makes a valiant attempt at a smile of his own. “I’m quite alright. Just — remembering.”

“I can believe that,” Marius answers,  sombre , but relaxing a bit at finding  them on  a common ground. “I was passing by and  — ah, well. No. I just thought I’d come and pay my respects. You understand.”

Enjolras nods.

“I should probably get moving,” the other man mutters. “This weather is terrible and —” he gestures with the umbrella in his hand, only to halt a mid-movement, growing clearly uncomfortable again, probably feeling that complaints about the weather might be of poor taste on what is essentially a memorial.

Enjolras smiles, almost despite himself. “I assure you, I have no Romantic objections to the concept of umbrellas. They are quite useful — indeed I should have probably brought one.”

“Ah. Good.” Marius makes another attempt at a smile, but there is no more confidence to it, the unspoken acknowledgement of their increasing distance and the reasons behind it filling the air between them.

Perhaps on another day, Enjolras would have left it be. But  this one  — this one  i s a time and place shared only between a handful of them and past recollections, however  bitter sweet,  a re no replacement for company of the present. He  touches the other  man ’s shoulder, quick  and  brief, leaving the way open if he really desires it. “Why don’t we go inside and see what we might be offered for dinner? And then you can tell me all the news about your family.”

* * *

The dinner with Pontmercy turns out to be a lot longer and a lot more informative than Enjolras might have expected, leaving him to rearrange his plans for the following day; Rosamunda and Musichetta had extracted from him a solemn promise of a breakfast together, after which they’d pay their respects at the cemetery — no doubt all his friends would be rightfully concerned if he disappeared for another whole day at this anniversary, but there should be more than enough time to make whatever appearances were needed and still have the evening free to pay a visit to Rue de l’Homme Armé, not to mention a whole extra day for handling any potential fallout. Thus occupied, he could almost push his own troubled recollections to the back of his mind.

Almost.

After taking his leave from Marius, lingering for a few minutes to converse with the staff, Enjolras makes his way out into the late summer evening, still cloudy, but no longer raining.

Once more he ma kes his way across the street, to the  ominous doorstep,  touche s his fingers against the soft wood.

_ Grantaire _ .

Stepping back, he lets his eyes flicker across the shuttered windows, his lips form ing silent words of  — not quite a prayer, not quite an apology,  n or an expression of gratitude, but some strange combination of all three. And in the middle of it all, there is a promise.

Enjolras turns around and makes his way home.

 

**Author's Note:**

> "Here misery meets the ideal. The day embraces the night, and says to it: ‘I am about to die, and thou shalt be born again with me.’ From the embrace of all desolations faith leaps forth. Sufferings bring hither their agony and ideas their immortality. This agony and this immortality are about to join and constitute our death. Brothers, he who dies here dies in the radiance of the future, and we are entering a tomb all flooded with the dawn.”  
> -Enjolras, 5.1.5


End file.
